Boice letter: Healthcare system

The health care system of the United States is broken. It is the most expensive in the world with poor health care outcomes getting progressively worse.

The Affordable Care Act was an attempt to address two of the three major issues for the American health care system: access ( i.e., insurance) and cost. The recent Opinion/Comment (“Obamacare …” and “Examining Aetna …”) on the ACA and the insurance exchanges outlined the ongoing problems and possible solutions. However, they did not mention one of the most cost effective methods: A single payer system.

Woolhandler et al. have clearly shown that a single payer system would reduce health care costs by approximately 25 percent by decreasing administrative costs. With the current health care budget expected to reach $3.52 trillion in 2017, the potential savings in administrative costs is more than enough to provide insurance for all uninsured/underinsured Americans without increased taxes or government subsidies while at the same time decreasing, or at least stabilizing, the cost of individual insurance.

A single payer system would help to address the access and cost problems of our health care system, and potentially the outcomes as insurance status, cost and access have been clearly shown to effect health care outcomes.